The Effect of Nutrition Course on Nutritional Literacy and Body Mass Index in Medical Students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Nutritional health requires nutritional literacy. In order to increase it, appropriate educational programs are needed. Therefore,this study was conducted to determine the effect of nutrition on nutritional literacy and body mass index (BMI).

In this analytical study, 228 medical students were selected and then divided into two groups that had passed the nutrition unit (n =114) and the group that had not yet passed this course unit (n = 114). Data collection tools included Personal information,nutrition literacy questionnaire and BMI calculation.The date were analyzed by SPSS version 19 for analyzing the data, descriptive(frequency, mean and standard deviation) and inferential (Chi-square, IndependentT,one-way ANOVA, Pearson and Binary logistic regression) statistical methods were used.

There was no significant difference between BMI classification and the nutritional literacy mean between the two groups. There was a significant difference between the levels of nutrition literacy (low, medium, high) in the two groups (p value = 0.015). There was no significant relationship between BMI score with passing the nutrition course and nutrition literacy score in both groups. Also, binary logistic regression test showed that passing the nutrition course, could increase nutrition literacy by 0.52 times in students who passed the course than who did not (p value = 0.02).

The findings of this study showed a higher level of nutrition literacy in students who had passed the nutrition course. Therefore, it may be possible to increase nutrition literacy and promote nutritional health by emphasizing more on the mentioned academic unit.